Very fast .doc viewer

[canci]

Tired of firing up OpenOffice just to view a simple .doc file?
Then this might be the right thing for you. Well, it might not be
the best viewer you can get, but on my machine it's faster than
waiting for OpenOffice to load - compare 1 second to more than 10.


NOTE: This was done on an Etch setup.


The philosophy behind it is the following:
1. We use antiword to convert the given .doc file to a temporary, hidden
pdf file stored in the user's home folder (to ensure write permission)
2. xpdf views the pdf file
3. the hidden pdf file is deleted

A. Here's what we need:

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sudo apt-get install antiword xpdf-reader


B. Open your editor and type:

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#!/bin/sh
LANG="bs_BA" antiword -a a4 "$1" > ~/.doctmp.pdf && xpdf ~/.doctmp.pdf && rm ~/.doctmp.pdf


Now, some explanation:

The LANG flag sets a language environment. This is necessary if you use UTF-8, since antiword
doesn't support PDF conversion in UTF-8 for now. In order to use another language flag,
you'll previously have to add another one, which is done by:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales


Choose one that's not UTF-8, like my "bs_BA", which is different from my default "bs_BA.UTF-8".

the -a a4 flag in antiword tells the programme to convert to PDF in the paper format A4.
If this bothers you, type this to find out about other formats:

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man antiword


I use xpdf as the PDF viewer, but you could also use any other like evince or KPDF.

C. Let's save the file. I chose the name docview. Then make it executable by issuing:

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chmod +x docview


Now just move the file under ~/.bin/ or /usr/local/bin/

D. You can now enter something like this in the command line to see the fruit of your work:

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docview file.doc


I use Thunar, so I set this command to be the default viewer for .doc and .DOC files.

KNOWN BUGS:
Don't expect a perfect output - antiword still struggles with images - at least on Etch
(it won't display most of my documents' images, but otherwise the formatting is more or less fine).

[Issyer]

Nice howto. Here is mine.

Quick All Word Documents Viewing with a Nice Output

Step 1:
Install wine:

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apt-get install wine

Or get wine from here:
http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/archive/index.html

Step 2:
Install Word Viewer 2003 in wine.
Download

Step 3:
Make a file wordviewer with the following content:

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#!/bin/sh

if [ -r "$1" ]; then
   path="$1"
   shift
   cd `dirname "$path"`
   exec wine "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WORDVIEW.EXE" "`basename "$path"`" "$@"
else
   exec wine "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WORDVIEW.EXE" "$@"
fi

Step 4:
Run as root:

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chmod 755 wordviewer
cp wordviewer /usr/bin

Step 5:
Now you can go to the properties with you mouse right click to associate M$ Word extensions with wordviewer.
Enjoy.

[craigevil]

wv -
Programs for accessing Microsoft Word documents
wvWare (previously known as mswordview) is a library that allows access to Microsoft Word files. It can load and parse the Word 2000, Word 97, Word 95, and Word 6 file formats. (Work is underway to support reading earlier formats as well: Word 2 documents are converted to plain text.)
This package provides the following programs:
* wvWare: Converts to HTML and LaTeX. It's used by a small army of
helper scripts able to preview Word documents and convert them to various other formats, like PostScript, PDF, DVI, etc.
* wvRTF: Converts to Microsoft's Rich Text Format.
* wvSummary: Displays the summary information stream of all OLE2 files,
i.e. Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Access, etc.
* wvVersion: Outputs the version of the Word format a document is stored
in.
Note that conversion to DVI, PostScript, or PDF requires the tetex-extra package; PDF conversion also requires Ghostscript. Having ELinks, Links, or Lynx will greatly improve the plain text output. ImageMagick may help with the quality of images. If you wish to preview Word documents from the comfort of your mail reader, install a PostScript viewer like gv.

http://wvware.sourceforge.net/

apt-get install wv and your good to go.

[KOTAPAKA]

Just a quick update. There is this thing called catdoc which I find very useful in displaying MS word files. It is small as well so worth giving it a go if you are struggling with .doc's

[reidar]

If you install Midnight Commander (mc) along with antiword, it's even faster. Navigate to a word document in mc, press F3, and ... voila!

-r